From David to Kevin and Back Again
by diviner-of-dreams
Summary: Why was David briefly known as Kevin? Find out...
1. Detention

_From David to Kevin and Back Again_

Leave it to me to fall in love in detention. Pretty typical for a Healy, right? Well, I'm not in detention because I'm a bad kid. And besides, why would girls notice me when I'm surrounded by big jocks? When I'm in a normal classroom setting, girls look right past me as if I am the broken desk in the back of the room. They like guys in letterman jackets, not flannels. That's why I prefer to sit in the back anyway. I learned not to anticipate attention from someone of the opposite sex, so I put myself out of the jocks' way. Why let myself be disappointed if I can avoid the humiliation altogether?

Detention is different, though. It's a whole different host of kids, some of which I've never seen before. The girls from math or history or gym don't get sent here. The detention girls won't recognize me as the one weird kid in their class with wiry hair, a baggy flannel shirt for every occasion, and ever-darting brown eyes.

All things considered, I'm not a bad kid-not really. I go to detention as a sort of relief from the embarrassment of the school day. Trust me, I've been around bad long enough to know what disentangle myself from my mom and my brother Mark. My mom is the yelling type. When she raises her voice, her red-rimmed eyes narrowing like a dog's, words like _worthless_ and _stupid_ falling off her tongue like poison, I can feel myself cowering down to her. I can't help it. I sometimes yell back, but even I don't believe my own words. Mark, on the other hand, is the type to knock over a vending machine, drive drunk, steal a kid's money and kick him while he's down. Me? I'm the type to watch all this happen and still cover for Mark at the end of the day. Brothers till the end, right?

Yeah, I guess my biggest sin isn't being bad, but being weak. Being passively complacent in all the shit happening around me. Not trying to change it, just running away or looking away. Till I can get out of it and attempt to define a world of my own. A world that isn't so predictable. A world where I can afford to win once in a while.

Who'd have guessed detention would be the place that would set that world into motion?

I didn't realize I was going to get what I wanted when I walked into detention and saw a furrowed brow surrounded by wild dark hair in my usual detention spot, the desk closest to the door. The girl was furiously erasing something on a slip of paper. She didn't look up at me, absorbed in her work. I knew I'd never seen her before. I stumbled past her, nearly tripping over my own clumsy feet, and parked in a desk in the next row, two desks behind her.

As soon as I sat down I felt like a moron. Why hadn't I sat directly next to her? In the time it took for detention to start, I could have mustered up a "hi." I had done this with girls before. A small squeak of a greeting: if they heard me, great; if not, it was quiet enough to pretend I hadn't said anything. Remember how I said I was weak?

On the other hand, I was at a safe enough distance to watch her without being spotted. I couldn't help myself. She was magnetic. She was a jolt of lightning in a boy's jacket. No one else at our school looked like that. Her shroud of dark curls hid her face from me. I leaned over slightly and saw that she was erasing the signature from some kind of parent slip. One quick look and I learned that the girl was failing history. The slip was to alert her parents of this fact. I knew because I'd gotten a few of those in my time.

She seemed to sense my eyes on her and abruptly turned toward me. I instinctively jumped back and averted my gaze. Now she'd think I was a total creep. If she was a regular in detention, she'd probably become well-acquainted with Lanford High's sex criminal population, who hung over the girls' shoulders like dogs on chains.

"Hey," she hissed. She was extending the slip. Was I supposed to take it? "Does this look forged?"

She was referring to the parent's signature line on the slip. I took it, looking at her hand as I did: small, white, short and not-fussed-over nails. The signature read "Roseanne Conner" in pencil on a swath of gray where she'd erased her first attempts. In her other hand she held a torn snippet from something the real Roseanne Conner had signed. Comparing the two, the signature the girl had forged looked damn near identical to the authentic.

"No," I said, my throat dry. "Looks real to me."

The girl smirked, grabbing the slip back from me triumphantly. "Only took me two tries to perfect it." I expected her to say more, but she had turned back to the front of the room. Didn't she have any other crimes she wanted me to examine? I had a sudden desire to praise her. Her confidence and radiance seemed to warrant it.

At that moment, Ms. Burke, the overlord of the detention hall, ambled in and began to call roll. Now was my chance to learn the girl's first name!

"Jesse Armentrout." A boy grunted in response.

"Sally Bates." No response. A blonde girl out of the corner of my eye raise her hand.

"Darlene Conner."

"Yeah," the girl with the curls said brazenly. So Darlene was her name. Oddly enough, I didn't think it suited her. She needed a badass rock-and-roll name, like Veronica or Jade. Darlene made me think of long dirt roads and corn fields.

Or sunflowers. Or a haze around the moon in the countryside. Not so bad, actually.

I opened my sketchpad and began drawing. I imagined Darlene in a field of flowers, her soft curls flowing around her on a gentle breeze.

I was snapped back to reality by the sound of Ms. Burke barking out the name Healy. Oops. I'd zoned out after hearing Darlene's name, but had nearly forgotten to respond to my own.

"H-here," I stammered, dropping my pencil. I'd only heard my last name, but it had to be me. There were no other Healys in school besides me and Mark.

Darlene turned her head toward me a fraction, seeming to size me up. "Kevin, huh?" I heard her say. "I know your brother, Kevin."

 _Kevin?_ She thought my name was Kevin? Did Ms. Burke say Kevin instead of David?

"No, not Kevin," I stammered, but Darlene didn't seem to hear me.

"My sister Becky knows him too," Darlene was saying. "With the cold sores to prove it." She rolled her eyes.

"Quiet," Ms. Burke called sharply. "Detention. No talking."

Darlene wasn't cowed. "Ms. Burke, you learned some longer words since last time!"

"Shut up, all of you," Ms. Burke warned, "or I'll keep you an extra hour!"

Darlene was laughing at her own self-proclaimed triumph. Where'd she get the guts to talk to a teacher like that? Not that overseeing detention counted as teaching, come to think of it...

"Yeah, Kevin, keep it down," she whispered, snickering. She turned back to the front and, pulling out a small red paperback, began to read.

So my name was Kevin now. Better than nothing. At least we knew each other on a first-name basis now. Never mind the fact that one of those names was made up.

I made a mental note to skip school next week, get to class late, walk the halls without a pass. Anything to see Darlene in that seat again. David was the weak, soft-spoken kid brother of Mark "Rebel-Without-a-Comb" Healy. Kevin could be something more than that. Kevin could be the guy that I wanted to be. Kevin would stand up to his mom when she called him worthless and stupid. Kevin would tell his brother he was a selfish jerk, and fought him if necessary. And Kevin would win that fight, too.

Kevin would talk to Darlene. And Darlene would like Kevin.


	2. Kevin the Babysitter

Kevin The Babysitter

 _Takes place prior to and during the episode "The Bowling Show"_

Well, I couldn't manage to make it to detention again. Guess I suck at being a delinquent when I mean to be. You'd think teachers would get wise to the fact that I'm related to actual delinquents and assume that some of that had rubbed off. Jeez. Why couldn't they be unfair when it actually counted?

I thought about this after school one day, parked on my mom's couch with my sketchbook. I say "my mom's couch" because everything at our house feels like hers, not ours. The couch, saggy and flat on the one cushion where I usually sat drawing or doing homework. Stray crayons and Cheerios on the other side from the girls; their tiny child crap seemed to mutate no matter how many times I tried to clean it up. Certainly nothing here reminds me of Mark, because he is hardly ever here. He's my brother and he lives with us, but he feels estranged. Most of the time I only see him when he is shuffling out of his bedroom in the morning, somehow already smelling like nicotine. I might see him again after school, slouching next to his truck with the permanent cigarette dangling out of his mouth, girls surrounding him. Lately, I've noticed one girl who's been hanging around Mark longer than the others. Blonde, perpetually clutching books, wistful-looking, like she wants to belong but knows she doesn't. I think her name is Becky.

She must have made an impression on him, because they're going out now. I'm really not sure what she sees in him. And although it's obvious to me what he _could_ see in her, I'm not sure if he does. I wonder what he likes about her. Not that he'd tell me if I asked. We don't really have that kind of relationship. He'd probably get defensive, ask me why I didn't have a girlfriend myself, if I was jealous.

Anyway, I was on my mom's couch, sketching. Becky floated into the living room behind Mark. She smiled at me as the two of them flopped down next to me, her eyes glancing across my sketchbook. I glanced back at her nervously, trying to smile in a friendly way, but I wasn't really used to sharing my art with people who really wanted to see it. Lisa and Nicki wouldn't get it, since they're so young, and Mark would make yet another crack about me being "a girl" or "a sissy."

Becky and Mark were practically fusing themselves into a Becky-Mark mutant on the other side of the couch. I kept my gaze anchored to the page and the path my pencil was making across it, but I could tell they were nuzzling and kissing each other. Weren't they together every second of the day? Did Mark _have_ to rub it in?

"Let's not get too comfy, Mark," Becky said, pulling herself away from him. "Remember I gotta watch DJ tonight. Dan and Roseanne are going to some white trash bowling party." She rebelliously referred to her parents by their first names, but I couldn't imagine her doing this in front of them.

"Well, can't you get out of it?" Mark hummed in her ear.

"No, I gotta get him off the bus and make sure he does his homework and takes a bath. You know, all the normal stuff my parents don't do."

"He's old enough to be alone, Becky," Mark said. I saw him move a lock of her hair out of the way to kiss her temple. "Let's stay here and let him fend for himself for once."

"C'mon, Mark…" Her words were absorbed by Mark's sloppy audible kisses.

"I don't mean to interrupt," I said loudly, "but there are beds in this house if you need one."

Both of them stopped what they were doing and glared at me. Mark's in particular was the poisonous one I'd come to know and love.

"What do _you_ know about that, anyway?" he snapped. "I don't see you with any plans tonight."

"Maybe David could watch DJ tonight," Becky said. "You don't mind, do you, David?"

Did I mind? Well, that depended. Did I have anything better to do tonight? My agenda looked like this: finish the sketch I was working on, keep an eye on the door in case my mom came home tonight, in which case I needed to guard my sanity against an assortment of names she liked to call me, then I'd probably hide out in my room till I fell asleep. Hard to say which kind of night I'd prefer, really, since I had never met DJ. He was kin to the angelic, straight-A student Becky — how bad could he be?

"What's in it for me?" This was my attempt to stand up for myself. I hoped I sounded tough.

"I won't pound you, that's what's in it for you," Mark snarled. So much for my attempt.

Becky rummaged through her jean jacket pocket and produced three crumpled bills. "This is all I have, is that okay?"

It was more than I'd ever seen from my mom for watching Lisa and Nicki. "Sure, whatever. Can you at least give me a ride too?"

And with that, my plan to sketch, mope, and dodge insults was shattered. What a shame. We crowded into Mark's truck, Becky in the middle, and rumbled out of the driveway and down the street. The way the truck moved, I imagined that the engine was held together with hair gel and rubber bands. No wonder he was obsessed with motorcycles.

I spent the ride trying to ignore Becky and Mark pawing at each other over my lap. We eventually turned onto Delaware Street, rumbling past houses nicer than those in our neighborhood.

Then we turned into the driveway of house 714. I peered out of the window, suddenly curious about the type of place where Becky lived. The house was yellow and had two stories. It was nice. There were no other cars in the driveway; both her parents probably worked.

"This is your stop," Mark said bluntly. I glared at him. As if I didn't know. I looked at both of them. It was clear that neither of them were going to go in with me to explain why I had become the babysitter. I had been looking forward to hearing that explanation myself.

"Later, then," I mumbled, sliding out of the truck and walking uncertainly up to the house. I knocked on the door, trying to picture what DJ could look like. Judging from Becky's appearance, I pictured a Dennis the Menace-type kid. Blond hair, blue eyes, overalls.

The door flung open and I was greeted by a kid with a dark bowl cut and squinting dark eyes.

"Hi," I said, trying to muster up a higher pitched, older-person-talking-to-kid voice, "I'm David, your babysitter."

"Where's Becky?" he demanded in a louder voice than I expected.

"Well, Becky isn't here right now," I said, crouching down to his level like adults do. "She asked me to be your babysitter instead. You know, I have two sisters about your age-"  
DJ clearly didn't buy my act. "Cut the crap," he said, a phrase that almost made me laugh when spoken by someone so young. He turned and ambled back inside. I took that as a would-be invitation to enter too.

The inside of the house didn't match the outside in the slightest. Everything was either worn or just plain tacky. I eyed the interior, from the painting of dogs playing pool to the rainbow quilt draped across the sagging couch. It was much more like my own living situation than I've ever imagined. Becky lived _here?_

"So, DJ…" I said, not really knowing what to do, "what do you and Becky normally do when she watches you?"

"We don't do anything. Usually she invites Mark over and he comes in through the back door and then they go upstairs," DJ said automatically, then his eyes widened. Clearly I wasn't supposed to know that. "Don't tell Mom and Dad that!"

"Relax, I'm not a snitch." I flopped down on the couch. Immediately I jumped back up. Something was stuck to me. I twisted around; an open-faced peanut butter and jelly sandwich was sliding down the back of my jeans.

I glared at DJ. He was watching me with a triumphant grin on his face. "Ha, ha," he said.

I rolled my eyes. So I was babysitting a hellion. Lucky me. And for the stunningly low rate of three dollars for the whole night!

"Just go upstairs," I said, dropping my imagined babysitter's voice. I peeled off the sticky slices of bread and tossed them into the kitchen trash can.

DJ huffed, stomping frustratedly up the stairs. "Darlene and Becky get mad when I do that," he groaned. "You're boring."

 _Darlene._ Is that what he said? Could...could it be? Darlene Conner from detention lived here?

I sank back down onto the couch, forgetting entirely about the sticky mess that now touched down on the upholstery. How had I not realized that they were related before? I had known what Becky's last name was. It just never occurred to me that Becky and Darlene could be related. They didn't even seem to be from the same planet, let alone the same family. Becky was white bread with the crusts cut off. Becky was pep rallies and neatly organized binders and tucked-in sweaters. Darlene was none of those things. She couldn't be. I mean, we sat in detention together. Becky had probably never been in detention in her life.

A thought struck me. Darlene lived here, right? That meant she'd be coming home at some point this evening. I began to panic. She'd walk in, probably coming home from some badass underground art showing or something like that, and see me, the kid she spoke to exactly once before. She'd wonder how I got into her house. She'd wonder why I was sitting on her couch. Logically she'd conclude that I was stalking her. I was doomed, plain and simple.

 _Relax,_ I told myself. _She could walk in at any moment. Act like you're supposed to be there. You're the babysitter, remember?_ I picked up the TV remote and turned it on.

Turns out I was there for about two and a half hours before anyone showed up. I was so absorbed into the TV that I didn't hear someone come up behind me.

"Who the hell are you?"

I glanced up and saw someone I deduced to be Mrs. Conner. She had the dark eyes and hair of both Darlene and DJ, and her suspicious scowl reminded me of Darlene as well.

I hesitated. If Darlene had mentioned me to her, she wouldn't have called me David.

"Kevin."

"Kevin _who_?"

"Kevin Healy," I said, trying to settle into the name that wasn't mine. "I'm Mark's brother."

I saw a flicker of further distrust across her face. "What are you doin' here?" she asked, still suspicious.

"Mark and Becky went out so they're paying me to watch Deej till they get back." I rolled my eyes, remembering his little prank.

"Oh," Mrs. Conner said, her voice indicating that this wasn't a sufficient explanation, "and where is _Steeeeeej_?" She was making fun of my pronunciation of her son's name.

"I made him go to bed," I answered, "he was getting on my nerves." I considered showing her the little prank he'd pulled on me earlier. The kid hadn't won any brownie points with me. Why tell his mom he'd been a perfect angel?

Before Mrs. Conner could grill me any further, the front door opened.

"I'm home," said a familiar voice. My heart skipped a beat; I knew that voice. It was softer and more relaxed than I'd heard it in detention. She didn't feel the need to prove herself on her own turf; she sounded comfortable. I turned my head to look at her. Before I could think of something, anything, to say to justify why I was at her house, Mrs. Conner started in on the interrogation again.

"So, I mean, they just left you here all alone, and that was it?" she asked. I sensed a grounding in Becky's future.

"Maybe she thought she'd get home before you," I suggested, somewhat enjoying the idea of getting Becky in trouble for making me babysit. "Maybe she doesn't care. Hey, for three bucks I'm not covering for her."

Mrs. Conner seemed satisfied, if not bewildered.

"I know you, don't I?" Darlene said, approaching me with a look of curiosity. "You're a sophomore, right?"

She recognized me, but she didn't remember me from detention. Did she remember my "name"? Should I tell her my real name, or reintroduce myself as Kevin? Mrs. Conner was still standing there; she knew me as Kevin. I couldn't back out of that name now…why hadn't I just said David to begin with?

"Yeah," I said.

"You hang out with Dave Malone and those guys?" Darlene asked.

"Sometimes." Dave Malone was a stoner in our class who sometimes sold me pot. When had she seen me with them?

Well, now or never. "My name's Kevin," I said, standing up. I stuffed my hands into my pockets.

"I'm Darlene," she said. She was so different here: soft and subdued, almost nervous to be talking to me. Did she really not remember me from detention?

"I know," I said before I could stop myself. "We had detention together once."

"Yeah," she said, suddenly remembering, "I thought I saw you there, but I didn't think you saw me." What did she mean? She spoke directly to me, even called me by my fake name. Was she playing coy in front of her parents? This new coy nature was very attractive to me. She idly ran her hand through her tumble of curls. The curls at the top of her head came to life, springing up and then falling back down to form a chaotic wave down the side of her face.

"Yeah," I said. Watching her hair move as if it had a mind of its own brought a smile to my face in spite of myself. "I saw you."

I was visited again by the need to praise her. I wanted her to approve of me. I wanted to say something to make her approve of me, how I'd noticed her.

"I like your hair," I decided to say, by far my favorite aspect of her appearance. "It's just...totally out of control." That seemed the best way to describe it. Somehow I knew she'd get what I meant.

Darlene smiled. This was the first time I'd seen her truly smile before. It was like the sun peeking out from behind gray storm clouds. It made me break into a smile, probably dorky-looking, before I could stop myself.

"Thanks, yours too," she said, her eyes searching my face in satisfaction.

"Thanks," I said brightly, wishing there was something else I could say that didn't sound stupid or desperate. The two of us just stood there, just kind of looking at each other, me wanting to say something else to make her smile like that again, but not knowing what the secret might be, or the place where that smile waited beneath the surface.

"Hey, do you have detention tomorrow?" I asked. A chance to see her again. A chance to compliment her on her counterfeit signatures. Did I have detention tomorrow? No. But it was easy to get it at our school: linger a few extra minutes in the hall and give a teacher lip about it. Kiss Darlene in front of the principal. No way could I muster up the balls for that - not now, anyway.

"Oh, I dunno yet," Darlene said.

"He's _Mark's little brother!_ " I heard Mrs. Conner say to her husband, and suddenly I was being gripped by the back of my neck and forced toward the door past Darlene.

"C'mon, Kev, I'll give you a ride home!" Mr. Conner barked suddenly, opening the door with a mighty force. Before I could even turn back to say goodbye to Darlene, I was out of the house and Mr. Conner was shuffling me into his pickup truck. I mumbled my address to him as I slammed the door.

I barely registered the drive home. All I could think about was Darlene and her chaos of hair and her secretive smile. The fact that she had seen me at school, without me knowing, floored me. What else had she seen? What else did she know?

At home I returned to my sketch pad, the drawing I'd started of her. I stayed up finishing it that night, feeling like the biggest creep in Lanford. But I was so happy that I didn't care.

END


End file.
